GUEST: Scott Budman, Business & Tech reporter for NBC in the Bay AreaLOWER THIRD URL: @scottbudman

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Today's date

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This is 'Tech News Today' for Friday June 21 2013

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Intel showed off its next gen mobile chips at Computex in Taipei Tuesday. The Merrifield will succeed Medfield as the smartphone SoC early next year promising better performance and battery life. Bay Trail will come to tablets priced around $399 by the end of the year. And Intel showed off its first LTE modem the XMM 7160 which will work with Bay Trail and one would assume Merrifield as well.

Zynga is laying off 18% of its workforce, or about 520 of its 2900 employees in order to reduce 80 million in staff costs and stay competitive in the mobile gaming space. As part of the cuts, Zynga's closing its offices in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.

Bloomberg says that HTC just lost its Chief Operating Officer. Now, normally, I'd say look for him in the couch cushions, but by "lost," I mean that its COO Matthew Costello is leaving that position in the company. Fred Liu will fill in for Costello as COO. Costello will stay on with HTC as an executive adviser.

US President Obama plans executive action against patent trolls on Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal reports the President will instruct the Patent and Trademark Office to create rules requiring the disclosure of a patent's owner in addition to its inventor. Expect five executive actions and seven proposed legislative changes that aim to curb abusive patent lawsuits and divert patent decisions away front he International Trade Commission.

The Dell XPS 12 got a nice update with the latest Intel fourth-gen Core i-series Haswell processors, which gives the XPS over two hours more battery life than before (according to Dell), and a significant graphics boost due to the integrated Intel HD4400 or 5000 graphics. Storage options include up to a 512GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. The new XPS 12 starts at $1,199.

Let's take a look at the Department of Justice vs. Apple ebook price-fixing case. The DOJ asserts that emails and statements made by Steve Jobs are proof that Jobs was the ringmaster of an ebook price-fixing conspiracy. Apple's attorney Orin Snyder argues the DOJ is twisting and mischaracterizing statements made by Steve Jobs to his biographer Walter Issacson and others. Snyder says that Jobs knew his statements would be read by millions of people and there is no way that they should be construed as "unambiguous admissions" of price-fixing.

IBM got cloudier today agreeing to buy public cloud computing infrastructure company SoftLayer Technologies for almost $2 billion according to BusinessWeek. IBM plans to combine its existing private cloud unit SmartCloud with SoftLayer to create a new Cloud Services division. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of the year.

Today Microsoft and 343 Industries announced Halo: Spartan Assault for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. The new game due out this July, though no specific date has been announced. The game will retail for $6.99 across all platforms supported, comprised of 25 levels. But something to note: if you purchase the title for Windows Phone 8, you can’t play the game on your PC; you will need two copies if you want to play on both platforms.

Google Reader shuts down in one month and the top contender to replace it, Feedly, is rolling out new features. Feedly announced partnerships with 3rd-party RSS readers Reeder, Press, Newsify, gReader and Nextgen Reader as part of API project Normandy. Feedly also announced it will make its service available in all Web brewers. Currently it only works with extensions in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.

European Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes outlined Europe's proposed net neutrality guidelines. ISPs would not be able to block or throttle services that compete with their own like VOIP. ISPs would have to tell customers what is included in their service and what speeds they can expect. This plan now will either be presented as a legal recommendation or a regulation. A legal recommendation could be implemented by December. If it is to be a legal regulation, it could take until 2015 before it's a law in EU member states.

- Lenovo says its in talks with a company to possibly go in on a joint venture- The news was within a Clarification Announcement made by Lenovo to its shareholders- "The board of directors (the “Board”) of the Company noted certain articles published in the internet in relation to a possible joint venture arrangement between the Company and a party on smartphone business. - The Board would like to inform the shareholders of the Company (the “Shareholders”) and potential investors that the Company is in preliminary negotiations with a party in connection with a potential joint venture transaction"- In the past, Lenovo was rumored to be looking into a deal with BlackBerry

Q: The statement is quite vague in who Lenovo could be teaming up with. Let's get creative: who's the partner for Lenovo? Blackberry? Intel? A software maker like Microsoft?

- Zynga laying off 520 employees (18% of total). shutting down ny, LA, dallas offices- One year ago, Zynga bought OMGPOP for $180M. Draw Something for iOS and Android was huge. Zynga has apparently shut down the studio, which functions at Zynga NY, to save $80M (according to memo CEO Mark Pincus sent to employees)- Pincus defends FarmVille franchise and success of FarmVille 2, says Zynga’s future is “multiplatform” and mobile.- some OMGPOP employees tweeting about being laid off, taking shots at Zynga "thanks zynga for again reminding me how not to operate a business" - VP of outreach Ali Nicolas.

- Zynga to go public at around $10, but has since crashed down to around $3 in extended trading following the news. Zynga is now worth around $2.4 billion, when it was at one point worth nearly $7 billion.- Kara Swisher at ATD notes: with $1.6 billion in cash and marketable securities, investors now consider the company to be worth just below $750 million. about $350 million less than Yahoo just paid for the blogging platform Tumblr, which has substantively less revenue than Zynga.q: how does zynga stop its freefall? does it go private? is its gaming model doomed?

- Google updated its Glass Platform Developer Policies on Saturday- It prohibits "content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material."- "Any Glassware that violates this policy will be blocked from appearing on Glass."- The first Glass pornographic app launched on Monday from a company called MiKandi. The app's name is kind of NSFW- MiKandi only became aware of the new developer policies after its app was launched. - On a blogpost, the company wasn't alerted about any policy changes and that when it received its Glass kit that they were developing an app within the terms. - MiKandi says it will change the app to comply with te new policies and a new version will launch soon.

Q: Is this kind of control on Google Glass a good sign? Bad sign?

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Verizon reportedly close to a four-year, $1 billion deal to stream every NFL game

- verizon & nfl looking to deepen partnership: according to Sports Business Daily, wrapping up a four-year, $1 billion contract for Verizon to stream every NFL game. Currently, Verizon's NFL Mobile Premium lets users stream games on Thursday, Sunday, and Monday nights for $5 a month. This new deal will include Sunday afternoon games on CBS and Fox as well as the league's complete playoff schedule.- Verizon would pay 5x its current $50 million per year. still less than what TV networks pay for NFL broadcasts. Last year, the NFL's TV partners signed nine-year deals, some of which pay nearly the same amount per year that Verizon will pay for the life of its contract. ESPN pays an average of $1.8 billion per year, while Fox and CBS both pay just over $1 billion per year.

- Verizon can stream every game on the NFL's schedule, it won't be able to stream them to every device on Verizon's network. The service reportedly will be restricted to "mobile phones" — a restriction that's largely already in place. The NFL Mobile app for iOS is a universal one, but users can only stream live games to an iPad if they also subscribe to Verizon FiOS or Cablevision cable service. The service isn't even available on Wi-Fi only iPads, and it also doesn't support video out over HDMI or Airplay - q: no wifi-only tablets? no airplay? who is this good for? ppl in transit?

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Randomizer

We will narrow this down to one story, put your initials to the left of the story you like best

Dudes... We actually had the Atari ET game... It is not a myth... It was very hard to do... I remember that much. I also remembering that ET falls in a pit... which was nearly impossible to get out of.... which makes the garbage pit possibility amusing.

We bought the ET game in Florida... brought it to Arkansas, but unfortunately, we sold it at a garage sale many years ago. So.... someone in Arkansas has an elusive ET game...